Thermostats may be used for sensing the temperature of a system or an environment and for controlling a plant for heating and/or cooling the system or the environment according to the sensed temperature so as to maintain the temperature of the system or the environment near to a desired set-point temperature.
Known types of thermostats include mechanical thermostats and digital electronic thermostats. Known thermostats are generally only calibrated for a predetermined temperature range and/or are generally only configured for use with a predetermined temperature sensor. Calibration of mechanical thermostats is relatively difficult and generally requires specialist equipment within a factory environment. Furthermore, mechanical thermostats may suffer from a drift in accuracy as a result of ageing. In the case of a digital electronic thermostat, calibration data for the predetermined temperature sensor may be stored in a memory. The operating temperature range of known thermostats is generally fixed and cannot be readily re-defined according to the temperature control application or according to the temperature sensor or type of temperature sensor.